LINZ, Austria (Reuters) - Swiss engineering group ABB (S:ABBN) will invest 100 million euros (87.06 million pounds) in an innovation and training campus in Austria to develop technologies for its industrial automation unit, it said on Friday.
A year ago, ABB bought Austrian industrial automation specialist Bernecker & Rainer (BR), which makes programmable controls for machines, to better challenge German rival Siemens (DE:SIEGn) on the factory floor.
Now it plans to create around 1,000 new jobs at a new campus at the B&R headquarters in Eggelsberg in the province of Upper Austria, ABB said.
The campus is expected to be finished by 2020.
ABB said a year ago it aimed to increase B&R's annual sales to above $1 billion from around $600 million.
"We are well on track to achieve this goal," Chief Executive Ulrich Spiesshofer said in a statement.
The Austrian acquisition helped ABB consolidate its No. 2 position in the $130 billion processing and industrial sector behind Siemens (DE:SIEGn) but ahead of rivals such as Emerson (N:EMR), Rockwell Automation and General Electric (N:GE).